Effects of a 4-week neuromuscular training program on movement competency during the back-squat assessment in pre- and post- peak height velocity male athletes

Abstract

The back-squat assessment (BSA) is a novel movement screen to detect functional deficits; however, its sensitivity to detect meaningful changes in movement competency following exposure to short-term neuromuscular training remains unclear. Twenty-six pre- and 22 post-peak height velocity (PHV) males were divided into experimental (EXP) and control groups (CON) and performed the BSA before and after a twice-weekly, four-week neuromuscular training intervention. Intra-rater reliability was determined by rating both EXP group’s baseline BSA on three separate sessions. ICC revealed very strong agreement for BSA total score in pre- (ICC ≥ 0.81) and post-PHV (ICC ≥ 0.97) groups across all sessions, but systematic bias was evident in the pre-PHV group for sessions 1 to 2. Analysis of kappa values for BSA individual criteria showed greater variability for pre-PHV (K ≥ 0.31) than post-PHV (K ≥ 0.62) across sessions. At baseline there were no differences in total score between the EXP and CON cohorts (p > 0.05). There were significant within-group improvements in total score for the EXP pre- (5.0 to 3.0, ES = 0.68) and post-PHV (2.0 to 1.0, ES = 0.82) cohorts, with no changes in total score for either CON groups (p > 0.05). Hip position was the criterion with the greatest improvement for both the EXP pre-PHV (12.0 to 7.0) and post-PHV (7.0 to 0.0) groups. The BSA appears to be a reliable screening tool for measuring movement competency in youth male athletes; and was sensitive to adaptations in movement competency following of neuromuscular training.